5 miles for 50 ¢

Ride$hare is designed to be a massively adopted form of spontaneous car-pooling or — less elegantly stated — paid hitchhiking. Instead of sticking out your thumb, you would hold out your fingers in a “V”. That hand signal would notify a passing driver that you would pay him 50 cents for each 5 miles or fraction thereof that you rode with him. For example, a 1 to 5 mile trip would cost 50 cents. A 96 to 100 mile trip would cost $10. If the driver’s car got 25 MPG, 100 miles would use $16 of gas at $4/gallon, but the “rounding up” feature on mostly shorter trips could easily pay for all of the driver’s gas, not even considering that the driver might, at times, have more than one paying passenger.